The Cold War Swap

and stopped him from living. By the time the police arrived I was wondering about myself, and I was glad when they came so I could stop that and start lying about something else.

CHAPTER 4

They arrived in grand style: their oogah siren heralded their arrival by a full two minutes— plenty of time for a competent second-story man to make it down the back stairs and out into the alley. Two jack- booted, green uniformed troopers burst in batting their eyes against the dark. Number one stalked over to the bar and asked if I was the citizen who had telephoned. When I said yes, he turned and proudly announced the fact to number two and a couple of men in civilian clothes who had also moved in. One of the non-uniformed policemen nodded at me and then they all went over to look at the body.

I glanced at my watch. Seventeen minutes had passed since the dark little man had been shot. While the police were looking at the body for clues or whatever they do I smoked a cigarette. By now Karl was behind the bar again and Hilde was standing near the door crumpling her apron.

“You fixed it with Hilde?”

Karl nodded. “She hasn’t seen him all day.”

One of the two plainclothes men detached himself from the group that was fiddling with the body and moved to the bar.

“You are Herr McCorkle?” he asked, giving my name a fine gutteral pronunciation.

“That’s correct. I called just after it happened.”

“I’m Lieutenant Wentzel.”

We shook hands. I asked him if he would like a drink. He said he would have a brandy. We waited while Karl poured it, said prosit, and he drank. Then back to business.

“You saw this happen?” Wentzel asked.

“Some of it. Not all.”

He nodded, his blue eyes direct and steady, his mouth a thin straight line that offered neither sympathy nor suspicion. He could have been asking about how the fender got dented.

“Please, would you mind telling me what happened just as you remember it? Omit nothing, no matter how trivial.”

I told it to him as it had happened from the time I left Berlin, leaving out only Padillo’s presence, which I suppose was something less than trivial. While I talked the technical crew came in, took pictures, dusted for fingerprints, examined the body, put it on a stretcher, threw a blanket over it, and carted it off to wherever they take dead bodies. The morgue, I suppose.

Wentzel listened carefully but took no notes. I guessed that he had that kind of mind. He never prompted or asked a question. He merely listened, occasionally glancing at his fingernails. They were clean, and so was the white shirt whose widespread collar was plugged by a double-Windsor knot tied into a brown-and-black tie. It didn’t do much for his dark-blue suit. He had shaved sometime during the day and he smelled faintly of lotion.

I finally ran down, but he kept on listening. The silence grew and I resisted the temptation to add a little frosting here and there. I offered him a cigarette, which he accepted.

“Uh—this man Maas?”

“Yes.”

“You had never seen him before?”

“Never.”

“But yet he managed to meet you on the plane at Tempelhof, became friendly with you, secured a ride with you to Godesberg—in fact, to exactly the same destination—and here you observed him running from your establishment after his companion had been shot. Is this not true?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Of course,” Wentzel murmured, “of course. But do you not think, Herr McCorkle, do you not think it is something of a coincidence— indeed, an amazing coincidence—that this man should sit next to you, that you should offer him a ride, that he should be going to your establishment, where he was to meet a man who was to be killed?”

“It had struck me that way,” I said.

“Your partner, Herr Padillo, was not here?”

“No; he’s away on a business trip.”

“I see. If this man Maas attempts to get in touch with you by some fashion, you will notify us immediately?”

“You’ll be the first.”

“And tomorrow would it be possible for you to come down to our bureau to sign a statement? It will be necessary for your employees to come also. At eleven hours, shall we say?”

“Good. Anything else?”

He looked at me carefully. He would remember my face ten years from now.

“No,” he said. “Not for the present.”

I offered the other three a drink; they looked at Wentzel, who nodded. They ordered brandy and drank it at a gulp. It was just as well. Karl had not poured the best. We shook hands all around and Wentzel marched off into the afternoon. I stared at the corner table where Maas and his friend had sat. There was nothing there now. Just some